What a 13-year-old babysitter taught me about financial leadership

You don’t forget the first time you’re left in charge of someone else’s chaos.

For me, it was a suburban living room full of Goldfish crumbs and sticky Legos. I was 13. My older sister—a seasoned babysitter with a Rolodex of wealthy neighborhood clients—was passing the torch.

I asked the question every first-timer asks.
“What do I do?”

She didn’t flinch. Just handed me the babysitter’s gospel:
“Leave the place better than it was when you got there.”

That was it. No list. No manual. Just the rule.

Fast-forward two decades, a few M&A tombstones, and one ERP war zone later—I’m sitting on The Reporting Norms podcast, talking to Norm about budgeting pitfalls, systems failures, and why nobody wants to ask the damn sales team a second follow-up question.

And all I could think was:
That babysitting rule still holds.
Except now the juice boxes are forecasts, the sticky toys are NetSuite records, and the living room is your entire cost structure.

We’re building on sand—and then blaming the architect

In our conversation, Norm asked me about budgeting mistakes. And I didn’t even have to think:

“Companies tend to use budgets in a static manner… just for compliance. I gotta give the board something. We gotta hit the growth target. We’ll figure out how to get there along the way.”

That line? It should come with a warning label. Because that’s not a plan. That’s a sales slogan duct-taped to a spreadsheet.

And it gets worse.

We don’t challenge assumptions. We copy/paste last year’s pipeline. We stretch conversion rates like taffy. And we forget that SG&A doesn’t scale itself—your revenue has a support cost, and it’s hiding in plain sight.

“I’ve seen a lot of models that really hone in on the topline number and forget there’s growth underneath the surface—within your SG&A—to support and even reach that revenue.”

We act like hitting the number is the win.
But if it bankrupts your margins or burns out your team, congrats—you’ve just financed your own collapse.

Finance is unpopular because we tell the truth too early

Norm asked how I handle stress testing forecasts with department heads.

Short version?

Ask questions until they either have a plan or admit they don’t.

“If sales says, ‘We’re going to double that target,’ I ask, ‘What’s your pipeline now? What’s your conversion rate now?’ You’re not going to 2x your close rate overnight. Not without strategy.”

And if I don’t get answers I trust, I dig into the CRM, look at historicals, call bullshit where needed. Not to be a jerk. Not to prove someone wrong. But because this is the part where the house either stands or falls.

“It’s not about proving people wrong. It’s about making sure they’re set up for success… You win together.”

Of course, this makes finance annoying. We’re the department that says no. Or worse, “show me.”
But here’s the thing no one likes to admit:
We’re not the killjoys. We’re the brakes on the truck before it hits the wall.

Want a good integration? Ask the person who actually does the work.

You want to know how most M&A integrations get botched?

Simple. Executives talk to other executives. Systems people talk to systems people. And no one thinks to ask the poor bastard reconciling the invoices in a spreadsheet made in 2004.

“The most important thing to do is talk to the person who’s doing the work… even if you think they’re wrong.”

We inherit a company, and immediately jam them into our system, our workflows, our processes. It’s not about fit. It’s about control. Visibility. “Synergies.”

“I’ve seen organizations force acquired companies into larger ERP and CRM implementations than they can handle.”

And then we act shocked when the data doesn’t flow, the reporting breaks, and half the team quits.

Here’s the dirty secret:
Most post-acquisition failures aren’t strategic.
They’re operational.
We made it too hard for the new team to survive.

ERP makes you look good—until it doesn’t

Everyone wants a NetSuite badge. It makes you look grown up. Enterprise-ready. Sophisticated.

And sure, maybe your board likes it. Maybe it gets you through a funding round.

But if you implement too early—or too fast—you’ll be wearing that thing like a Halloween costume with the price tag still on.

“In one of my roles, we tried to do a NetSuite implementation in four weeks to look good for the board. What ended up happening? Two staff accountants spent three weekends reentering data by hand.”

We hit the go-live deadline.
And spent the next five months redoing every report manually.

Garbage in, garbage out. And a morale bill that no one put in the forecast.

FP&A and accounting: it’s cats and dogs—until they’re raised together

Finance and accounting have a weird dynamic.
Operators think of us as interchangeable.
CEOs ask: “If I have a controller, why do I need you?”
Or vice versa.

But they’re not redundant.
They’re complementary.
Left hand, right hand.

“It’s like a cat and a dog. If you raise them from kittens and puppies, they get along. But if you wait too long, they’ll just fight.”

Accounting is your eyes.
FP&A is your depth perception.

“FP&A can flag asset impairments or product issues long before accounting sees it—because we’re projecting, not just recording.”

You want to catch the cash shortfall before payroll week?
That’s not bookkeeping.
That’s modeling.
And it only works if we’re on the same damn team.

Incentives don’t work unless people help build them

Now let’s talk comp plans—the corporate minefield where math goes to die.

It should be simple: align pay with impact.

Instead, we hand teams a model they didn’t help build, with goals they didn’t sign up for, and we wonder why they sandbag their numbers or game the discount ladder.

Here’s what actually works:

“Go to the team and say: ‘Here’s the objective. Can we actually impact this?’ If they help build it, they’ll fight for it.”

I once had a top sales rep who kept ignoring a new value-based pricing strategy. I pulled her into my office. Let her vent. Nodded.

Then I turned my screen around.

“If you’d priced your last deals with the new model, you would’ve 2x’ed your paycheck.”

She stared. Blinked. Then went full disciple.

Sometimes all it takes is one person seeing the upside.
Especially when you let them see it themselves.

So what do I actually believe?

That babysitting rule still runs through everything I do.
Budgeting. Forecasting. Hiring. Rollouts. M&A. All of it.

Ask better questions.
Stress-test assumptions.
Slow down the implementation when your gut says no.
And above all else—

“Leave the place better than it was when you got there.”

It sounds quaint. It’s not. It’s the entire job.

Finance doesn’t get to be sexy.
We don’t get the glory.
But we do get one hell of a view.
And if we do it right, we help the company not just survive—but understand itself.

Thanks again to Norm for having me on The Reporting Norms.
It was a rare kind of conversation: honest, specific, and no performative fluff.

And if your team is stuck between a fake forecast and a broken system—let’s talk.

No fluff. No theater. Just better math.

Catch the new episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/GwT9SpoR0ak
or listen on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/3FlrTO1L3R6WMPEWxSqn4E?si=cumhxMZlTyaedUZSYs9UtA
and Apple Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/cz/podcast/insights-on-how-fp-a-and-accounting-collaborate-from/id1788561175?i=1000719821775